Writing 06
If corporations are afforded the same rights as individual persons, should they also be expected to have the same ethical and moral obligations and responsibilities? Who (if anyone) or what (if anything) should enforce fair play and competition between corporations?
I believe that there absolutely needs to be ethical and moral responsibilities and obligations placed on corporations. Yes, their primary function is to make their product, but how the product is used isn't totally out of their hands. Especially in today's rapidly evolving tech world, companies have the ability unlike ever before to put unprecedented power in the hands of everyday people. Just as careful consideration is put into the research and development of products, the same, if not more care should be put into how it is rolled out and distributed.
I sort of see a corporation's relationship to its products as analogous to a parent's relationship with their child. The parent was responsible for bringing the child into the world, and we as a society say that the parent is then responsible for taking care of the child, making sure it doesn't get into trouble, making sure it grows and develops healthily, and wrong done by the child is a responsibility of the parent to right.
In a perfect world, companies would just take up this responsibility themselves because it is so obviously the right thing to do. In reality, though, we can see this hasn't always happened. Because of this, government regulations seem to me the only way to get companies to "do the right thing," especially when the right thing isn't always in their best financial interest.
The punishment system for corporate wrongdoing needs to be seriously revamped. Fining the corporation itself rarely leads to change, as the real people responsible don't feel the consequences nearly enough. Rather than punishing the corporation as a person, I believe that going after individual people responsible for wrongdoing would be a much more effective method that would lead to people thinking twice before wrongdoing. The threat of direct, personal repercussions are much more frightening than the risk of a measly fine to the company as a whole. As we see time and time again, individual people high up in the corporate world rarely see any consequences for wrongdoing. That must change.
The issues of company size and "how big is too big" doesn't sit as well with me. I don't see some well-defined line that easily answers the question. If a mom and pop shop fights hard for sales and to be the best among their competitors, we celebrate this as classic American business. But when do we go to the rapidly expanding mom and pop shop and tell them to stop and that they're too big? Clear monopolies seems to be a good place to look (Google in Search, Amazon in Cloud, etc), but even then, it does seem slightly wrong to me to punish companies for being successful. It seems like we're saying "work hard, make money, and grow, but not TOO much."
The nature of business is to be competitive and "better than your rivals." I don't think companies really have a responsibility to "play nice" with everyone.
I believe that there absolutely needs to be ethical and moral responsibilities and obligations placed on corporations. Yes, their primary function is to make their product, but how the product is used isn't totally out of their hands. Especially in today's rapidly evolving tech world, companies have the ability unlike ever before to put unprecedented power in the hands of everyday people. Just as careful consideration is put into the research and development of products, the same, if not more care should be put into how it is rolled out and distributed.
I sort of see a corporation's relationship to its products as analogous to a parent's relationship with their child. The parent was responsible for bringing the child into the world, and we as a society say that the parent is then responsible for taking care of the child, making sure it doesn't get into trouble, making sure it grows and develops healthily, and wrong done by the child is a responsibility of the parent to right.
In a perfect world, companies would just take up this responsibility themselves because it is so obviously the right thing to do. In reality, though, we can see this hasn't always happened. Because of this, government regulations seem to me the only way to get companies to "do the right thing," especially when the right thing isn't always in their best financial interest.
The punishment system for corporate wrongdoing needs to be seriously revamped. Fining the corporation itself rarely leads to change, as the real people responsible don't feel the consequences nearly enough. Rather than punishing the corporation as a person, I believe that going after individual people responsible for wrongdoing would be a much more effective method that would lead to people thinking twice before wrongdoing. The threat of direct, personal repercussions are much more frightening than the risk of a measly fine to the company as a whole. As we see time and time again, individual people high up in the corporate world rarely see any consequences for wrongdoing. That must change.
The issues of company size and "how big is too big" doesn't sit as well with me. I don't see some well-defined line that easily answers the question. If a mom and pop shop fights hard for sales and to be the best among their competitors, we celebrate this as classic American business. But when do we go to the rapidly expanding mom and pop shop and tell them to stop and that they're too big? Clear monopolies seems to be a good place to look (Google in Search, Amazon in Cloud, etc), but even then, it does seem slightly wrong to me to punish companies for being successful. It seems like we're saying "work hard, make money, and grow, but not TOO much."
The nature of business is to be competitive and "better than your rivals." I don't think companies really have a responsibility to "play nice" with everyone.
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